Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Monday, March 22, 2010

Moving Christmas off the treadmill has not happened yet. Actually, I just need to beat a path through Christmas and find a different place for an eight-foot artificial tree, but even that seems to be a challenge at the moment.

So I'm going to put the treadmill on a back-burner for the moment.

Now before you start ranting that I'm falling off the proverbial wagon by failing at my last two attempts to modify my lifestyle, let me first say that I'm not just pushing it aside, I'm moving something else in to take its place: Fried food.

Or rather, the removal of such from my diet. This has actually been a goal of mine since the start of this whole "Live Healthier" effort, but I wanted to tackle the soda first and then try portion control. Soda's still completely out of my diet after almost 3 months. I miss it, but I'm happy it's not there anymore. Portion control failed miserably. Fried food I can do. Or not do. You know what I mean...

Of course, it's not completely a coincidence that I'm bringing up fried food now. I happened to have a pretty unpleasant day last Thursday after eating too many fried items at lunch. I ended up tasting that lunch for the rest of the day as it sat like a rock in my gut. Determined that this was no way to enjoy a meal, I decided that it would be the perfect time to modify "fried" out of my gastronomic vocabulary.

No more french fries, onion rings, fried chicken, battered cod, corn dogs or anything else that requires submersion in boiling oil to achieve a "cooked" state. Fries are my big one... the rest not so much, but they do creep in from time to time so I thought I'd mention them.

To go along with fried, I'm also excising all items that are overtly sugary like the hot cocoa I sometimes drink at work or the half-and-half tea (half sweet, half unsweet to those living outside the South) I've been ordering at times at restaurants. Seems obvious that I shouldn't be drinking them anyway given the whole "no soda" effort, but I guess they've been a crutch. (Artificial sweeteners don't work for me, don't ask me to explain.) Well, no more.

I've been sticking to these new rules since Saturday morning and so far I've lost 3 pounds. I was actually lighter this evening after dinner than I was when I woke up this morning. And that's eating normal meals, just skipping anything fried, breaded or battered and ordering water in place of tea at restaurants.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

I've been a rabid fan of Lost for several years and with the final season upon us, I've been talking about Lost a lot with a few of my coworkers and friends who are nice enough to suffer my rantings. I've been coming in and shooting off an e-mail with notes and questions about the previous night's episode for a few weeks now and figured these would also make good blog posts and maybe elicit some discussion from all 3 of you out there who read my blog.

So without further ado, my notes for last night's episode. To help understand some of my ramblings, any characters name with an "X" after it refers to the version of them in the Flash-Sideways reality (the one where the plane never crashed on the island). I'm also abbreviating Flash-Sideways as "FS" in some places.

• So, it looks like my friend Terry was right after all that the “chains” Richard were in were the chains on the Black Rock and that he was most likely on that ship when it came to the island. Good call. (I'd been thrown by Ilana's reference to Richard as Ricardus and thought that maybe he'd been from the Roman era... not too crazy an idea given all the Egyptian artifacts on the island.)

• I’m sooo completely retracting my thoughts about how the character episodes lined up with Season 1. Ben wasn’t even in Season 1. (There was a theory that the Season 6 episodes were paralleling the Season 1 episodes, at least regarding which character was being focused on... the past 2 episodes have refuted that theory).

• While we’re on BenX, some more hints as to what happened on the island after “the incident”, or at least the hydrogen bomb version of the incident that we saw last season. BenX’s dad had an interesting choice of words, saying “if we hadn’t left”. Seems to imply that there was choice in the matter. “If we hadn’t had to leave” or “if we hadn’t been forced off” or “if we hadn’t been sent back” would have implied no choice. So what exactly did happen after the whiteout that the inhabitants didn’t have to leave unless they wanted to? Does this imply that the sinking of the island wasn’t an immediate effect?

• BenX’s dad isn’t mad at him for killing his mother. Does this imply that there was a forgiving moment at some point after the incident or perhaps that she died in some other way and the alcoholic bitterness never existed. If that’s the case, I’ll wonder again if the incident changed events from 1977 forward only, or if it had further reaching impact in the past.

• While we’re on fathers… BenX didn’t kill his dad and seemingly wasn’t hated by his dad. JackX has a son and is a much better father than ChristianX, though it would seem that ChristianX was still a bad dad. LockeX’s father presumably didn’t factor much into his life, otherwise Helen wouldn’t still be with him. It remains to be seen how he was paralyzed in the FS timeline. Next week is looking to be a Sawyer episode… will we find out that SawyerX’s mother was never conned by LockeX’s dad and both his parents are still alive or died from other causes that didn’t result in him wanting to seek vengeance on “Tom Sawyer”? It seems that all the “father issues” in the original timeline are non-existent in the FS timeline. Though much more pedestrian, the FS timeline inhabitants lives are seemingly better. Lends some weight behind my theory that the FS timeline will become the dominant timeline at the end.

• Exception to the father issue theory would be AlexX… she doesn’t seem to have a dad (RousseauX has 2 jobs) or maybe he’s just a deadbeat. Perhaps since she’s one of the few who had a father that gave a damn in the original timeline, her FS self is the one with father issues? Also her being at BenX’s school reinforces the thought that somehow all the island inhabitants in the FS reality are going to join up at one time in one place like some Close Encounters moment and their gathering will shape the end of the game. Remember that Ben told Lapidis that the island got him anyway? Foreshadowing by the writers?

• Last word on Ben (for now). In both timelines, even though he’s an insufferable manipulative bastard, you kinda feel sorry for him now. It was good to see his “redemption” last night. And was it just me or did anyone else notice the soft focus lens they used on everyone when he got back to the beach after being forgiven by Ilana? It fringed the picture with a white haze. Almost like he was entering some heavenly place. Just coincidence of lighting?

• Curious to find out what’s up with Widmore. Is he going to park the sub at the Dharma dock or the Looking Glass or join up with Locke at the Hydra? Is he bringing Wallace with him? You don’t need a lighthouse if you’re underwater… this could be that “other way” that Jacob referred to.

• For that matter, I’d love to find out about WidmoreX, EloiseX & FaradayX. Also RichardX.

• The number 6 keeps appearing. 6 numbers, Oceanic 6, 6 candidates (6 seasons?). Strange that Ilana would say that there are 6 candidates left when she knows that Locke is dead and believes that “Kwon” means either Sun or Jin but not both. Who’s the 6th? Wallace?

• I would have liked more of a soliloquy moment form Jack last night. His conversion from man of science/fact to man of faith/hope was almost too sudden. It would have been nice to have heard a little more of his reasoning about why he’s suddenly putting his life in Jacob’s hands. It wasn’t as bad as some of the sudden character changes in Heroes that drove me away, but it was close. A few sentences about not being able to explain all the crazy things he’s seen would have reinforced his conversion. Saying that he’s decided that he wants to either end it by dying or end it by finding out why Jacob chose him but either way he was tired of the game and wanted it to end… that would have been good too. I’m waiting to see the “Let go and let Jacob” bumper stickers.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Ok, so the Portion Control portion of my "get healthy" routine was an abject failure.

(No, this is not one of our pugs)

I guess in a way it was doomed from the start. It's really something that I should have saved until later this year or at least a few more steps down the road. So for now, I've drawn a red line through it on my spreadsheet, which means I need to revisit it at a future date. For anyone who's interested, both weight and waist are hovering around the same place they've been for a while, for obvious reasons.

All is not completely lost however, as I did begin taking a multi-vitamin and a separate Vitamin D pill over the past 3 weeks and that's now a daily routine.

So, for those keeping track, I started with "No Soda", which is still going strong, and "Sit Ups & Push Ups", which is not quite as strong, but I'm still doing them when I remember. They'll be easier to work into a full exercise routine.

And lucky me, I've arrived at my predetermined week to start walking on the treadmill 3 times a week for at least 20 minutes. Don't laugh, but I'd be afraid what 30 minutes would do to me and I really don't want to end up unable to get out of bed one morning because I tried to do too much too fast. I'd have started with 15, but I'd be laughing at myself at that point. So, we're working up to 30 minutes, ok?, and then eventually 5x a week and then for longer periods until I'm on the thing for some yet-to-be-determined number of minutes, hours or miles every day.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The trouble is that the treadmill is buried under Christmas in the basement. When all was said and done in January, there was literally no room in our basement storage closet for most of the Christmas decorations because it's already been filled ... with the ever increasing piles of Connor's toys ...and clothes ...and much larger piles of my own toys ...and random things in file boxes ...that need to be cleaned out ...but haven't yet ...but I swear I'll get to them one day soon ...so don't get on my case about my 47 file boxes ...that I've brought from San Diego ...to Chicago ...back to San Diego ...and now out to North Carolina ...and hid away in the basement ...hoping I wouldn't have to deal with them...

...where was I? Anyway, I'm taking a day off next week to work around the house and priority 1 for me is excavating the treadmill and getting it into working order so I can start walking next week. I'll keep you posted.